Dear Lara, thank you for making time for an interview with us! We’re happy to welcome you at HAZE Gallery. Tell us, please, about yourself and your art.
My name is Lara Micheli, I am a Swiss photographer born in Geneva. Having studied Art History and spending seven years in Paris, now I’m based in the Basque Country, South West France.
For me, taking photographs is very intuitive, it’s a part of my everyday life. I can neither plan it nor make time for it. It’s just there for me to catch, if only I’m lucky and attentive enough. I have to grab the instants that vanish in the fuss of the daily busy life. That’s why I don’t usually rely on any technical tools like a tripod, a timer or anything… I’ve always succeeded in bringing my ideas to life, using just what was available on hand, what would wander into my sight. May it just be laziness? Anyway, eventually such an attitude became my style, an imperfect and unpretentious one. I like simplicity, and I believe in the power of accidents.
I use my original images as negatives and make a very limited series of prints with them (there might be three only, signed and numbered). I enlarge them up to 80 x 80 cm. This series is called “I inherited from her chains”. It was shot a year ago, during the quarantine.
In general, the period of isolation was useful for me in terms of digging deeper, exploring and documenting my feelings, questioning my own being. I had a chance to go through the topics I cherish most (e.g. femininity, transmission of experience, life cycle) once again, but viewing them from a different perspective, figuratively speaking, with my eyes wide open. I’m curious for details, because they reveal much more than you might think. The lens of my camera is like a magnifying glass. I use it to look for clues and find answers.
You’ve been studying art in France. Do you think that professional education is important for photographers or you rather believe it’s more about their inner talent and intuition?
That’s true, instinct is important, it really makes a difference. However, education might also help one develop professionally, start acquiring more artistic tools, produce deeper works, I believe. After receiving my Art History degree, which was so rewarding, I felt the need to keep learning, so I began to take online photo classes, a trimester per year. Photography can be quite a solitary job, and it certainly feels good to get a fresh, external look on your work from someone who knows sense in the field. It might push you to try new things, add more layers to your images… By the way, having deadlines also helps me think less and create more.
How did the experience of living in different countries influence your mindset and life philosophy? How is it reflected in your art?
Right, I’ve lived in different countries. Now that I think about it, all the places I’ve settled in had some similar traits: e.g. all of them were by the water, close to the border with another country. These two elements mattered enormously, they made me feel at home. First, I need to feel water to be inspired in my work: a lake, an ocean, any body of water, actually.
Second, being close to another country enables me to escape, become a stranger to a foreign language and a foreign culture. While traveling, I also came to the conclusion that big cities drain my creative energy, so I need to work at a slower pace. I think it reflects in the rawness of my work: I like simplicity, unstaged sceneries...
Mostly you work with a Polaroid camera. Why did your choice fall on this technique?
I didn’t really choose it, me and a Polaroid camera just happened to meet on a shoot, and we kind of liked each other! It's been years, and it still feels like the first day we met… They call it chemistry, I guess! The SX-70 is a wonderful tool, a high-end camera, yet it’s portable like a toy. I can’t change it to any other device now, because it has really shaped my vision over time.
Polaroid SX-70 is my way of seeing and making images, I just need it. Besides, it has a very mild, almost feminine shape, which kind of gives birth to an image... People feel at ease in front of a Polaroid camera, so it’s easier for me to capture what I want than if my models were terrified by a big pointing lens. Surely, my camera is full of constraints, but I work so much better with them.
You shoot women’s portraits a lot. How do you seek models? What do you think about the role and the position of women in the modern world; the way they transform?
I find it easier to portray women of my close circle, like my daughter, my sister, my step-mother, my friends, because we’re all kind of disarmed: they will easily allow me to “examine” them through the camera lens, because they know it takes me time to create the right image.
Funny enough, for me as a photographer, it’s hard to work with professional models, because they wear a perfect face-mask, they know how to look their best and always do that, which isn’t what I am looking for.
The modern world is still a tough place for women, although we’ve broken the glass ceiling so many times already. Today we have a variety of feminine role models to look up to, so it might be hard to choose one, because, actually, we can be anything and even many things at once.
What is the essence of femininity for you? Does it find any reflection in your art?
For a very long time it has been like that, and it wouldn’t change: women were on one side of the canvas/camera, while men were on the other side. Now it’s getting more interesting: the idea isn’t necessarily to do the opposite, but to reach more complexity and diversity by mixing up the gender roles, adding some creativity into the process. I find femininity a very mysterious and fascinating issue, we haven’t been able to define it yet, although many attempts have been made throughout history. The thing that has certainly changed is the outlook on women and the persons who identify themselves as women as well as the female role in the arts.
What would you define as beauty?
It’s a complex question, which has no right answer, while there may be as many beauties as there are eyes to watch it. Personally to me, beauty is very much related to hope. The human brain needs hope to survive, which is scientifically proven: without any hope, parts of the brain stop their functioning and eventually die. So I would define beauty as something vital to survive in this apocalyptic world.
You said social media kills imagination and creativity. How do you find balance between the digital and real worlds, today when the boundaries between them have been almost erased?
I didn’t really mean social media kills imagination. Sometimes I even get inspired by the artists I discover online. Still, I’m sure that social networking makes our visual and creative language poorer and poorer. We look at the same types of images over and over again, read some similar, simple-minded captions, which is extremely sad. That's how a unilateral point of view on various things is being shaped, which is dangerous for art.
Conversely, art is meant to show the diversity and complexity of human existence and the world around. Art should never tell you what to think, how to see things, what’s good and what’s bad. It should rather open doors for you, making your mind acknowledge the infinity of possibilities. Art is certainly not there to give you the ready-made answers, but it can teach you to ask the right questions. Social media suggests just the opposite. It’s hard to find balance, but one thing is absolutely clear to me: the world is real and vast, while social media is more like a fish bowl. Yet God knows I love Instagram!
How has the pandemic affected your art and your world view? How do you think the art world will shape in the future?
The fact that I couldn’t rely on anyone or anything tangible anymore, just liberated me and made me more daring in a way. I became pro-active. Time turned elastic, which was scary, so I told myself it’s now or never. After all, you are the one to judge what’s right and what’s wrong in your body of work, the rest is just different points of view. A lot of good things happened to me and my art during that year, because I didn’t wait for a miracle, but rather helped myself. I guess the art world will evolve from Catholicism to Protestantism, haha! What I mean here, there might be fewer mediators between people and art in the future. Also, hopefully, less flashiness and more sincerity. But don’t get me wrong, we still need some extravagance!
Do you have any bold ideas you would like to implement, but you don't know how yet? If so, please give an example.
I think we all have many ideas crossing our minds, but very few of them will stay, worth to be developed further. The one that has stuck with me for a long time now is trying to photograph men the way I photograph women, with enough trust on our both sides to allow vulnerability to show. Oh, and yes, I would love to make a story about a childhood friend who's a drag queen. I find it fascinating the way they play with the so-called feminine attributes, and I think it would look stunning on a Polaroid camera. I already have some images in my head! I just need to find the courage to start :-)
Instagram Lara Micheli @lara_micheli